Crime is a matter of interest for sociologist. There aren’t any many higher priorities for society than fighting crime, and any insights sociologists are able to contribute might help. For this reason, sociologists often receive funding to collaborate with other scholars and law enforcement authorities to investigate why crimes occur and how it can be minimized or prevented. (site source, sociology for dummies)
Crime is an interesting subject to study because it represents the absolute edge of what is socially acceptable. Societies may be incredibly diverse and tolerant of a wide range of behavior, but those behaviors defined as crimes are where societies draw a line and say you may not. Different societies draw that line in different places. They also have different strategies for keeping people from crossing it—as well as punishing them when they do. Understanding how and why those lines are drawn can tell you a lot about how a society works in general.
When someone violates any social norm, sociologists call it deviance. If someone doesn’t behave in the way they are expected to behave, they are acting in a deviant manner. It may sound harsh, but it’s okay—we are all deviant. No one person behaves in a manner exactly like they’re supposed to. We sometimes get rude to a friend and feel bad about it. Sometimes, we are proud of violating social norms like having friends who are gay. Deviance is just a part of social life.
Crime is a specific type of social deviance. Everything that’s true of deviance is also true of crime. There may be benefits to crime (money, power, thrills), but there are also costs—costs that may include fines, imprisonment and even death. What’s important to understand is that crime is just one particular subset of deviance. What count as deviant may vary from one social group to another, and within that general category of deviance, what counts